In 2024, Harris reflected on what had happened in 1973: "There were many factors that influenced Patty’s decision to stay and fight. What we didn’t know when we kidnapped her was that she had rejected her mother, a gold digger and right-wing ideologue."
October 6, 2026
"I have learned how vicious the pig really is, and our comrades are teaching me to attack with even greater viciousness."
Said Patty Hearst — in her "Tania" incarnation — quoted in "One of Patty Hearst’s Kidnappers Has Died/Bill Harris was a disillusioned Vietnam veteran looking for purpose when he joined a revolutionary group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army."
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19 comments:
There's a great Camper Van Beethoven song about "Tania". The beloved revolutionary sweetheart.
Gosh, he was just a mixed-up Vet looking for a life of meaning. Y'know like Adolph Hitler.
Fruity Rudys juice stand on Telegraph AVe, at Sather Gate employed, or hid, several members of the SLA.I was a student there at that time. I stopped there a lot in those days, and managed to remain blissfully ignorant of the group and what they did. briefly dated a women who worked there, but she wasn't in the group
Shorty after a bunch of SLA members burned up in a house in LA, a few friends and I got to chat with the FBI about our contacts etc.
Ah, history before social media. much nicer, safer, and fun way to live than now.
Right-wing? Libertarian. Far-right is anarchist is leftist.
Gold digger? Redistributive change schemes.
Did she consider entertaining abortive ideation, performing a human rite... planned parent... hood to relieve her "burden" of state and mind? An ethical Choice.
If it's not about dad, it's about mom, but it probably had more to do with brainwashing and the abusive, rapey environment inside of the SLA.
The 70s were when the California dream started to go rotten -- wildfires, mudslides, oil slicks, Zodiac, SLA, Jim Jones -- but it wasn't clear to everyone for another 20 (or 40) years. Watts and Manson were harbingers.
It’s impossible for a woman to give consent when kidnapped and brainwashed.
“My name is Tania.”
https://www.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/26d90508-b3a7-4205-a586-8aaf0a6fc414
Jackie is a punk
Judy is a runt
They both went down to Frisco
Joined the SLA
And oh, I don't know why
Oh, I don't know why
Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah
Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah
Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah
Perhaps they'll die, oh yeah
My home town of Hawthorne, CA has popped into two of today’s readings - Zabriskie Point and now Patty Hearst and the SLA. One of the businesses they raided was the Western Surplus store just around the corner from where I was living and grew up. When they first opened in the early fifties, they gave away army gear to any kid that showed up. I got a pack, a web belt, canteen and cover, ammo pouches, helmet liner and a scabbard (no bayonet). In later years we bought our Levi’s here and even later, navy bell bottoms, chambray shirts and farmer overalls. It always had that old canvas smell.
That reminds me: Patty Hearst did a cameo in the movie Serial Mom, where she plays... a sympathetic juror who lets the titular Kathleen Turner off the hook. I don't think I need to connect the dots with recent events on that one.
In any event, she falls victim to Serial Mom for "wearing white after Labor Day".
I love “Serialmom. It’s the movie. I watched as a comfort movie the day I totaled my car. There’s an old post about that
I thought she was talking about bacon. Never mind.
The eternal Thompson gunner, still wandering through the night
Now it's ten years later, but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun and bought it
Sorry to hear there was an SLA survivor. Should have burned with the rest.
Yay, fellow Serial Mom fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBgC_lzKBQ
Patty Hearst was kidnapped, beaten, held in a dark closet for a protracted length of time, and sporadically raped. This man went through his life without any guilt or even awareness of the monstrous crimes he committed. The obit says he served four years in prison, then got out, remarried and led an apparently pleasant life.
Quoting Batman (Adam West): "Poor deluded girl."
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